A cable tester is commonly used to determine particular features or characteristics of a cable—e.g., a length of cable, whether or not a fault exists in the cable, and so on. A conventional hand-operated (portable) cable tester is typically manually coupled by a first connector (such as an RJ-45 or other connector) to a “head side” of a cable, and a second connector at the other end of the cable (called the “tail side”) connects the cable to a load. Such a cable tester typically requires the load to be a remote node terminator or a loop back module, and the cable tester can be used perform an analysis of the cable, detecting a short, an open, a crossed pair, or a reversed pair.
A short condition occurs when two or more lines are short-circuited together. An open condition occurs when there is a lack of continuity between both ends of a cable. A crossed pair occurs when a cable pair communicates with different pins at each end of a cable.